Why Do The Kids At 'The Umbrella Academy' Have Numbers Instead of Names? Here's Your Explanation

In the Year of our Lord 1989, 43 women all gave birth at the same moment. It would not have been remarkable, except none of the 43 women had been pregnant five minutes before giving birth. Hearing of this miracle, a mad billionaire, Sir Reginald Hargreeves, traveled to all the mothers and attempted to buy their children for study. He managed to get custody of seven of them. But why do the kids at The Umbrella Academy have numbers instead of names? It's because this is how Hargreeves thought of them. Warning: Spoilers for The Umbrella Academy Season 1 follow.

Hargreeves is an eccentric billionaire and mad scientist. (In the comics, he's an alien.) He adopted the children out of a sense they would be unique in some manner, perhaps super-powered mutants. In this, he was correct. But he had zero interest in parenting — he built a Robot Mom to care for the children — and did not bother to use, or even learn, the their given names. Instead, he numbered them, in order of usefulness, as their powers manifested.

The early going of The Umbrella Academy is a little hard to follow, due to the flashback portions refer to the children solely by their numbers, while in the present day, the adult versions all use their real names. Also, there's a couple of numbers missing, which makes it confusing.

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Here is a rundown of the characters by number, name, and ability, when the show starts.